Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Yet Another Top Analyst Calls a Bubble

Nouriel Roubini and SocGen are bearish on the stock markets. Now, another top analyst, Meredith Whitney, famous for her right call on the collapse of Citigroup and other banks, now says that the market rally is not backed by fundamentals.

Bank analyst Whitney bearish on U.S. market
Mon Nov 16, 2009 3:47pm EST

NEW YORK, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Bank analyst Meredith Whitney said on Monday she does not believe the U.S. equities rally is based on fundamentals, and she is as bearish as she has been this year in the stock market.

In an interview with CNBC television, Whitney said there is "no way" the banking sector is well capitalized and it is time to reduce weighting in large-cap banks.

Whitney also said she sees a double-dip U.S. recession.

The main U.S. stock indexes pared some of their gains during the interview.


Whitney wrote a particularly pessimistic, but accurate, report on Citigroup, on Oct. 31, 2007, which got her attention from many Wall Street analysts and the news media. She has since followed this report with similar reports and predictions, which have tended to leave the companies involved with lower stock prices as the market has taken her opinion seriously. One of her claims is that goodwill is built-in to a lot of companies' share prices, and that as the market moves into dark times, this goodwill will dissipate.

In 2007, Whitney was listed as the second best stock picker in the capital markets industry on Forbes.com's list of "The Best Analysts: Stock Pickers", as well as being named "one of NY Post's 50 Most Powerful Women in NYC.

Whitney's extremely bearish view on banks landed her on the cover of the August 18, 2008 issue of Fortune Magazine. Even before the problems in September that befell Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, she is quoted as saying, "It feels like I'm at the epicenter of the biggest financial crisis in history, however even a broken clock is right twice a day" In October 2008 Whitney, was ranked as one of Fortune 500’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Business.” In 2008 she won CNBC's "Power Player of the Year" over Jamie Dimon, Ben Bernanke, and Hank Paulson.

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